Happy Death Day (2017)
An Unexpected Pleasure: Happy Death Day (2017) If Dunkirk and Blade Runner 2049 were two of my favourite films from 2017, then Christopher Landon’s Happy Death Day is definitely the one that turned out to be the most unexpectedly good. Considering the title and the poster, I walked through the cinema doors anticipating a standard slasher movie, released for the Halloween market; instead I emerged with a big grin and...
Blade Runner 2049 (2017)
Customized Miracles; Customized Angels: Blade Runner 2049 (2017) If you haven’t seen the 1982 Ridley Scott-directed Blade Runner then you will still find an enormous amount to enjoy about the 2017 outing; but it is only fair to say that this is a sequel in its truest form. It is not content to merely rehash the original – one of the great classics of science-fiction cinema – but rather takes the many themes of that film,...
It (2017)
Everybody Floats: It (2017) Let’s see. Put it this way: You know how, in the movie The Shining, Jack Nicholson’s character doesn’t look as if he’s playing with a full deck even in the opening interview scene? Remember the eyebrows arched like crazy and that feral-looking grin? Like a guy trying his damnedest to look at least half-sane and not doing a very good job of it? In the novel you have this build-up where...
Detroit (2017)
‘It’s a War Zone Out There…’ Detroit (2017) I think that we can safely call Kathryn Bigelow a talented painter, producer and even occasional actress. And we can certainly call her an always interesting and quite brilliant film director. What we can’t call her is a prolific one. To my astonishment and mumbles of ‘where did the years go’? I’ve just discovered that it is a full three decades since she nailed me to the cinema...
Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2017)
Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2017) I had been given the erroneous impression that writer/director Luc Besson simply thrusts the audience into Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets with little or no context to help establish the coming action. Not so. To the hauntingly familiar notes of David Bowie’s ‘Space Oddity’ we see the space station Alpha in 1975 orbiting the earth as different races from the home...
Dunkirk (2017)
Dunkirk (2017) The dialogue is so minimal that there are entire stretches of Dunkirk with not a word spoken. Yet when those words do come they are often as quietly devastating as what we are witnessing on screen. – The tide must be coming in — – How can you tell?– – The bodies are coming back – And it truly does feel as if we are witnessing an extraordinary and even pivotal point in our...
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